Have you ever thought you were kinda sorta decent at something only to learn that your performance is the equivalent of striking out repeatedly in slow-pitch softball?

Welcome to my world.

Not long ago I circled the ice, feeling a bit of a breeze as if I had stuck my head out of a car window. Hey, I’m speedskating!

An Eagles lyric came to my head: On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair.

I asked my 9-year-old daughter, Elle, to shoot a video to complement this column.

Then I made the mistake of watching it. Whoa, did I look bad.

And then I made it worse by boosting the volume enough to hear her commentary.

“God my dad’s slow.”

Perhaps I should have suspected this as pint-sized skaters whizzed past me during a previous session with the Northbrook Speed Skating Club.

“Not as easy as it looks, huh?” said 11-year-old Matt Ryan, a real life “Matty Ice.”

‘This was my life’

Xavier Lawrence started on roller blades. On Christmas Day at a rink in Gurnee, he saw the ice and said: “That’s cool.”

Xavier was 8 then and now he’s among the nation’s fastest 11-year-old speedskaters, a development mother Lesley described as “unexpected. I think it’s fascinating that (skaters) are spatially aware of what is going on around them while going at insane speeds. They maintain their formation almost like birds.”

A long-track speedskating national champion, Xavier is a cookie or two shy of 5 feet and weighs “90-something” pounds, he said. We don’t know where the 2026 Olympics will be, but Xavier hopes to be there.

“He could be the best in the world if he wants,” said his coach, Tommy Anderson. “A lot of things are about to happen in his life.”

Anderson nearly made the 2006 Games, often rooming with eight-time medalist Apolo Ohno during junior competitions.

“His work ethic was unmatched,” Anderson said. “Everyone else would be done for the day. We’d be wondering why he wasn’t in the cafeteria with us. He was a ‘first guy (in), last guy (out).’”

Anderson began speedskating at 7.

“My parents didn’t want me to get hurt playing hockey, and I didn’t want to figure skate,” he said. “So they stuck me here. Next thing I knew, this was my life.”

Now he’s a part-time chef and mechanic who mentors young competitors such as Xavier, who offered this speedskating newbie a simple piece of advice: “Stay low.”

Other kids from the Northrbook club also were eager to chime in …

“Be sleek and small, not tall.”

“Train and feel the pain.”

“Get fast and don’t be last.”

Indeed, the biggest draw for most kids can be summarized in one word: Speed.

‘Take the glory or the downfall’

The Northbrook Speed Skating Club has had an affiliated skater in every Olympics since 1952, when 21-year-old Chicagoan Chuck Burke competed in Oslo, Norway. Burke also competed in the ’56 Games in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, the last to feature natural ice for speedskating.

He grew up near Belmont and Cicero in Chicago, roaming around various parks in the winter with a shovel in hand, searching for decent ice. Times have changed. For one, modern speedskating suits are skin-tight to maximize aerodynamics.

“We dressed for warmth,” Burke said, recalling how he would stuff newspapers in his sweater because they served as windbreakers.

Team sports weren’t his thing. In speedskating, he said, “you cannot blame the goalie or the quarterback. You take the glory or the downfall.”

The club will be represented at the Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, by Glenbrook South alumnus Brian Hansen, 27, Lana Gehring of Glenview, 27, and 28-year-old Mitch Whitmore of Waukesha, Wis.

‘Samurai swords strapped to your feet’

So you want to learn how to speedskate?

That was my mission, and Jeremy King promised to help. King is a weightlifter and cyclist who played high school basketball. Within a year of his family joining the Northbrook Speed Skating Club, he became president.

A speedskating workout routinely starts with “dry-land” training to enhance form and conditioning. Forget about merely doing wall sits. How about knocking out 1,000 body squats?

As for equipment, talk-show host Stephen Colbert once put it like this to Olympian Katherine Reutter: “You run on top of water with samurai swords strapped to your feet.”

King first tried to outfit me in vintage leather boots from the 1960s or ‘70s. Honestly, just squeezing my foot into them was a workout. The modern boots are made of carbon fiber that mold to the foot.

“They’re supposed to be uncomfortable,” King said.

Mission accomplished.

The skates have 15.5-inch blades that are flat on the bottom. The blades of figure skates are angled to allow for a toe push-off. Hockey skates have thin blades that permit athletes to rock back and forth. Speedskating is all about the edges.

“Instead of skating in a straight line like hockey and figure skating, you rock back and forth from outside edge to inside edge while still moving forward,” King said. “It’s more like skiing or snowboarding; you have to be on one of the edges or you will wipe out.”

The “basic position” is, well, similar to sitting on the toilet. And then lean forward, King tells young students, as if you have dropped some toilet paper.

Another instructor, Deanna Joyce, advised: “Get down until you are parallel with the ice and then round up like a turtle and look forward. Now you’re like a sports car — close to the ground and aerodynamic. Speedskating is all about physics.”

I topped out at high school chemistry.

Alas, I switched to modern boots (made by Bont) and took the ice. The kids split into three groups, 1 being the fastest. I said I belonged in 4.

“3.9,” one of the kids responded, quite kindly.

I did some laps but didn’t last long. The “dry-run” training was enough of a workout on its own.